This is my blog describing a typical week being a Microbiology with Biomedical sciences concentrations/Pre-Medicine Major at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. I hope that all of my readers will enjoy my entrys, and if they have any comments, please post them, because then I can read them and respond to them as well.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Always pay attention!!!!

So last week I was studying for Organic Chemistry Theory I, and I didn't understand a topic or two. So it is funny because you never really know when you are going to inspire one of your teachers. The neat thing about UW-La Crosse is that generally you have the ability to really get to know your professors, and they get to know you. If you go in and ask questions, even if you are in a class of 13o kids, they will get to learn your name and also know what your major is and what you are interested in. They take an interest in you because you took the time to invest in them. Be careful when you do this however and always make sure that you are paying attention when you ask a question. One of my teachers told me once: "If one person asks a question, generally a lot more people are curious about the same topic." Well the reason why I said this is because one day I am sitting in Organic Chemistry and thinking that if Chemistry is the central science, how does it apply to Biology. Biology for me has typically been a class of random useless memorization and a really big pain to study for. It was about that time that I ran across a problem that we did in class dealing with the structure of amino acid chains. Now as many of you science minded people know, an amino acid is the building block to proteins, virtually found in all parts of your body. I started to wonder....what/how does a DNA molecule look like, and why is it that only Adenine can pair with Thymine and Guanine pair with Cytosine.....

So I went in to ask Dr. Mortell my Chemistry teacher and this is where the pay attention factor comes into play. You see as I was asking her how this can be she was one step ahead of me. I gave her a question that she never thought about asking this particular topic on a test before and it turns out that on the test that I was given this Friday, my problem that I asked about was on the test....and I knew exactly how to do it!

So it just goes to prove that if you are going to ask the question, make sure that you are paying attention to hear the answer, you never know when you might see it again.